I am a very, very medically anxious person, so when I hear about rare diseases or completely wild medical cases, it turns my stomach in an indescribable way. I am always terrified that either myself or my loved ones will suffer some great medical hurdle, so my imagination can get pretty wild when it comes to “dreaming up” potential afflictions. I now get to add a new-to-me condition to my anxiety list: trichophagia.
This disease, or rather compulsion, occurs when a person pulls out and consumes their hair. Doing so can cause a rather complicated gastrointestinal situation, which a 9-year-old Vietnamese girl recently suffered because of this affliction. People reported that a girl identified as “H” by FV Hospital in Ho Chi Minh City was admitted with severe abdominal pain. In a statement released by the hospital, it claimed the girl came to their emergency department with significant pain, “persistent vomiting, weight loss and pallor.”
“During the examination, we noticed that the child’s hair was unusually brittle and standing upright, which prompted us to take a more detailed medical history,” Dr. Le Duc Tuan, General Surgery Department at FV Hospital, explained in a statement. “Only then did the mother reveal that the child had developed a habit of pulling out and eating her hair since the age of two or three. The family had not paid much attention to it, assuming it was harmless.”
The hair she ingested, however, ended up braiding together so tightly that imaging revealed it was coiled from her stomach to her small intestine, causing a life-threatening obstruction. The statement went on to explain that hair cannot be digested, so its accumulation in the stomach can lead to massive obstructions like the one the girl faced.
Conducting an extensive major open surgery to remove the hairball would have cause a “significant” amount of trauma and recovery, so surgeons did a three-hour laparoscopic surgery where they entered the girl’s digestive tract through an endoscopy. When the hair was removed, the child felt immediate pain relief, was able to resume normal eating habits, and was discharged by the hospital after five days.
“At recent follow-up visits, she has shown healthy weight gain and a marked improvement in both her physical condition and overall well-being,” the statement continued.
Tuan asserted that trichophagia is a mild psychological disorder that is heavily linked to stress and anxiety.
“If not detected early, this behavior can lead to very serious consequences, even becoming life-threatening,” the surgeon added in the statement. “In many cases, psychological support is also necessary to prevent recurrence.”
H’s parents were given guidance on how to care for her and to help her work through this as a family unit. They were asked to closely observe her habits, spend more time with her, and to seek help if they notice she is falling back into the same habit.
